Call it the fanboy effect, call it the superior user experience the device offers, but research shows that iPhone owners are much more likely to stick with Apple than are folk who've bought handsets from other companies.
The data comes from UBS and takes in conversations had with more than 500 smartphone owners globally.
Some …

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My only problem with my HTC desire is the small amount of onboard memory and the number of apps that still cannot ber entirely moved to SD, so yes I wont be moving away from android but I will be paying attention to how much onboard memory the phone has on my next upgrade.

Not very good trolling there

Apple deactivating Apps

Are you just trolling? I've never had an app removed from my iPhone by Apple. Even if I delete the app from my phone there's a backup of it in iTunes. If Apple decide to remove something from the App store they do not connect to people's devices and remove it from there as well.

@AC 18:02

WiFi sniffers? Got one and it's still working just fine thanks. It even works on the iPad, which wasn't even announced when the app was removed from the store. Read what I wrote above: Apple may remove apps from the store for new buyers, but once an app is downloaded you can keep it.

Hardly worth paying attention to...

...with only 500 surveyed users, there's no point trying to work out patterns or %. Until you look at stats from 10,000s of people, it has now value at all. I bet if you surveyed a different 500 people, you'll get wildly different % and figures.

The problem with android...

Is that unlike the iPphone for most of the handsets you have to make a blood sacrifice at the full moon to get an OS upgrade for most handsets, unless you are into hacking your phone. Whereas with the iPhone the upgrade is pretty painless, and even if you have an older phone, you are not left behind until you physically dont have the hardware to run the updated OS.

How many prefectly good hardware wise android phones have been stiffed and left running old versions of the OS, it was only with OS 5 that I think the original and 3 vesions of the iphone were left behind.

I agree that Apple do have the "We'll push out an upgrade to *our* customers when we want" attitude sorted. Carriers get no say, which sounds like heaven to me, and being a single supplier of hardware and software means control freak levels of control. It also means you don't get a choice in much at all. Want a Qwerty keyboard, no. Want a better camera, wait for next year. Want a bigger screen, sorry this is it. Want a smaller handset/screen, nope, sorry. It's swings and roundabouts.

With Android you go out and look at the handsets and buy the one you want. With Apple you get what you're offered, or you stick with your current handset.

Anyway, all that aside, I would hardly call Apple updates painless. Google the exact phrase "iphone update problems", including the quotes. 57000 hits. Lose the quotes and you're into the 150million marks.

Methinks the conclusions be wrong

iPhone users don't have another choice of vendor for iOS, they're stuck with whatever Jobsian nerdgasm comes out next. Android, on the other state-the-obvious-reversal-hand, can flick over to another vendor, and keep all their lovely googly-cached data. Except fot the apps, because not one android developer seems to use the damn backup mechanism.

Based on that information, this survey seems to have come up with the conclusion that 11% of iOS users are prepared to dump their OS completely and 45% of Android users will not stick to the same manufacturer. This is just meaningless as far as trying to make an OS comparison.

To be fair to Android here, this was a sample of affluent international types, not average consumers - so they are far less concerned about handset cost than most and also far less interested in 4G/LTE support.

I was of a similar opinion

I got myself a G1 from T-Mobile a few years ago and got so frustrated with not being able to upgrade past 1.6, regular crashes of core functionality (the phone "app" would occasionally crash when answering a call and would disconnect and lose the call details). I upgraded to Cyanogen 2.1 and it couldn't cope with all that.

I finally came to upgrade and vowed not to get caught up as an early adopter again and decided to get an iPhone, but my (now ex) girlfriend wouldn't allow any apple software in the house so I ended up getting the Omnia 7 and I've not looked back.

I do realise that all/most of my bad experience with Android was due to getting the first phone out there and not waiting for the first upgrade, but I'm happy with WP7 (despite the frustration of the NoDo upgrade, but considering I couldn't even upgrade my last phone to the latest version, it wasn't too bad). Roll on Mango!

I don't know what you've done to yours. I'm using a HTC Sensation. Done nothing to it other than fill it with the apps I use. Very smooth, no lag on anything I do, it's like one of those adverts that says 'sequence shortened' in the small print on the telly. I found what you've been finding with my HTC Magic after having it for two years but no such problems with this lovely bit of kit.

The loud stand out

"The Apple fans are as rabid as this guy. Just read above."

No, it's just that the overzealous ones tend to be loud. If I went by what I read online, iPhone users and Android users should be having turf wars with violence to rival any L.A. gang, shiving each other with blades made from shattered phone displays. Most people I know in real life tend in the "eh, I like this one better" direction more than any sort of fanaticism, no matter what they use.

Misleading conclusion

What it says is that 55% Andriod users will definitely switch to another Android device. That does not automatically mean that 45% will definitely move from Android! There are no figures for "maybe" or "don't know", or even "I'll see what's out there when I'm ready".

It also looks like the 55% is Andriod customers who will stay with Andriod, but definitely switch vendor. That may not include Android users who actually do decide to stay with vendor. Including that figure may change the overall picture for Android.

When it comes to generic OSs, brand loyalty is not so significant. Most knowing people assuming that Android is very similar, will compare battery life, function, or reviews. With locked in customers with Apple and RIM, the only way they can maintain their user experience is to stick with brand.

I probably will not stick with Samsung, but I will definitely be getting an Android phone, unless, that is, a WebOS device comes my way at a knock-down price.

But this is all surveys and statistics anyway, and you know what they say about those....

Good analysis

The other thing that got me was the assumption that moving from android would be an "upgrade". From reading the article, their new phone might not even be a smartphone!

IIRC, Samsumg and HTC are the market leaders in Android so it might be fair to assume that 30% of android owners are going to stay with their manufacturer (using a weighed average of the brand satisfaction numbers). If 55% are going to stay with the platform but change brand then it's 85% of android users who are staying with Android compared to 89% of iphone users who are staying with iOS. Given the tiny sample, I doubt the difference has any significance. Based on those numbers though, here's an alternative headline:

"15% of Android users to downgrade to rival phone OSs; 11% of iPhoners will upgrade"

Furthermore, who's to say that any of those 55% (keeping Android but changing brand) are pissed off with their current hardware? I'm happy with my HTC but if Samsung have a great phone when I want to upgrade then I'll move.

The title refers to Peter, not the article author. That guy should be tied to a post in the car park until he learns to count.

Came here to say this

Following the maths in the article, 55% of Android users will switch to an Android device from another manafacturer, and 45% will switch to a different OS. And therefore 0% will stay with an Android device from the same manafacturer?

Surely the conclusion should be that (for example, in the HTC case) - 39% will stay with HTC, 55% * 61% = 33.55% will move to another Android manafacturer and 45% * 61% = 27.45% will move to another OS. And therefore, 72.55% of HTC users will stay with Android. The figures difer for different Android manafacturers. obviously.

Walled gardens have no doors

That's not consumer loyalty, it's the pain of moving away from a poor (imho) choice outweighing doing the moving.

There's quite a few appleistas in my current client's co have have looked at my Desire HD and said, hey, actually, that's a pretty nice phone, how well do you get along with it ? And these are gfx designers, hardcore appleistas.

Actually...

Most Android users I know bought their phone because it had something the iPhone didn't; I bought mine because it had a keyboard, four dedicated buttons (home, back, menu, and search), could make calls that didn't sound like I was under water, and charged from a standard connection. When I bought my phone, iPhone didn't even have a flash for the camera. For $6, I bought a car charger and an extra USB charging cable to hook to my laptop; I can buy a second battery for $3. Oh, right, and I can replace the battery, too.

No, the reason I didn't buy an iPhone wasn't price - it was because the iPhone just didn't have what I needed.